Dreams
by Artemis-chan of Redwing
Summary: Mush has been having some odd dreams...and he isn't telling anyone about them.


****

Dreams

He'd not told the others about the dreams. They were his, but aside from his possessiveness, he knew the other guys would tease him about them.

'Dreamin' 'bout goils, eh, Mush? If you'se so pop'lah wit' da ladies, why can'tcha get a real one?' His mind did a frighteningly good impression of the communal voice of the Lodging House. The knowing smirks, the teasing, the racuous laughter would have brought him to tears.

So he hid his delight at dreams of her. They just thought he was a morning person. But he's slipped once.

"'Ehy, I met dis goil last night," he'd said in order to keep Blink from pummeling Crutchy one morning. Blink had given him an odd look, and he'd realized, too late, that he'd been in the Lodging House all night.

He'd kept quiet about his good mood since, but he suspected Blink knew.

************

"Mush, you'se okay?"

As much as he wanted to, he just couldn't honestly answer his best friend.

"Yeah, I'se foine."

"Ya shoah?"

"Yeah. Jus' havin' some mem'ry probl'ms. Bad day." That, at least, was partially true.

"If ya nee ta, ya can talk ta me, y'know."

"T'anks, Blink."

************

He really did trust Blink, but not with this. She understood his reasoning. She always understood him.

He knew the others wondered sometimes how he could just go to sleep so readily each night. They just didn't know what awaited him beneath the skies of his dreams.

Sometimes, it was day, other times night, but the weather was always perfect, an endless summer. The trees, of which there were many, were always green and leafy, as was the grass. The large creek was a bit brown, but he ignored it as he did most of the odd things of his dream world. The main thing was that she was there.

He was never quite sure what she looked like. She was, for lack of a better word, ineffable. Not, mind, that he really knew that ineffable meant "unable to be expressed in words," but rather that the word and the gist of the meaning were somehow available to him in his dreams. In fact, he could draw upon knowledge of things he never ever would have known. He just didn't know how, or why, he could.

Everything seemed to trace back to her. She was the reason he was there, his whole reason for even existing anymore. She didn't speak much, but he became a veritable chatterbox. He spoke of the guys, of New York, of living on the streets, everything. She just looked at him with those incredible, ineffable eyes, and he was lost in her.

That was why he slept so much. The guys thought he might be developing narcolepsy (he'd heard them discussing it one day when they thought he couldn't hear), or becoming very sick, but everything else about him was normal. It was just that…

He was losing a lot of weight because he wasn't eating, or rather caring enough to eat. He was wasting away, and the thing is, no one could do anything for him. He was stuck in a spiral, and he didn't even realize it. He lived for _her_.

**************************

They awoke one morning to find Mush lying in his bunk with a huge grin on his face. No one could wake him, because his body was so wasted he had died during the night.

The funeral was brief, a newsboys funeral, and the boys pushed his death to the backs of their minds. They had to survive on the streets still, even if one of their number had left permanently.

*************************

Skittery never told the others about his dreams of her. When he woke to find himself in the Lodging House every morning, he put on one of his grumpier looks and pretended that everything was normal, even though he longed to continue sleeping, just to be with her…

****

A/N: Wow, I really had no clue where that was going. O_o I'm not all that depressed much, either. Anyway, just some random stuff to hold everyone over until I get back to work on Bridge, which will most likely just be on the weekends. I've started my job at camp, and I don't even know if I'll get to use the computer there to just type. Anyway, thanks for reading! Reviews are appreciated, though not necessary. ^_^;;

****

Disclaimer: You really think I'd let these boys wander like this if _I_ owned them? o_O


End file.
